Travel tip: McDonald’s Japan will finally let you pay for your food with a credit card

Visa, Discover, and other American brands now accepted as payment for the wonders of McDonald’s Japanese menu.

In Japan, cash is king, and not just for minor transactions like buying a bottle of green tea at the convenience store. Need to pay hundreds of thousands of yen (the equivalent of thousands of U.S. dollars) for fees and deposits when moving into a new apartment, or for a whole year’s worth of income taxes? No one will blink an eye if you pull out a thick stack of bills and start peeling them off like you’re completing a black market arms trade.

But credit cards are gradually becoming accepted at more places in Japan, and this month you can add the Golden Arches to the list of places you can pay with plastic. McDonald’s Japan has announced that as of November 20 the chain will start allowing customers to pay with credit cards at all of its roughly 2,900 branches nationwide.

McDonald’s will be accepting payment by six different credit cards, many with extensive international customer bases, which should be nice for foreign travelers and homesick Japan-based expats. The useable cards will be Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, and JCB.

Of course, even in Japan, McDonald’s is just about the least expensive fast food option there is, so it’s unlikely that a meal there is going to hit you in the wallet so hard that you’d need to finance it on credit, but paying by credit frees up your cash to spend at other places in Japan that don’t take credit cards, and if you’re traveling here, the option to pay by card cuts down on the amount of time you have to spend exchanging money or looking for an ATM that’s compatible with your home-country card. Plus, with so many cool Japan-exclusive McDonald’s menu items to try, like Pikachu McFlurries and Wasabi Sauce Chicken McNuggets, it’s nice to know you’ll never miss out because you don’t have enough cash in your pocket at that exact moment.